


Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring

by Itty_Bitty_Albatross



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itty_Bitty_Albatross/pseuds/Itty_Bitty_Albatross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief, poetic look at four overlooked characters and the seasons they are reminiscent of. Clarisse La Rue, Katie Gardner, Travis Stoll, Grover Underwood. Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring

Clarisse La Rue/Summer  
She brushes the sweat away from her forehead   
and takes a deep breath in of the humid, warm air.   
It locks in her lungs as if she were drowning   
but she knows she isn’t because her heart keeps pounding,   
adrenaline rushing.   
The heat, the inescapable heat pushes at her   
like a sentient creature.   
She could escape, of course, but that means leaving,  
leaving the training area to go to her cabin.  
That’s not home—it could never be home like here,   
among the blades she used to prove herself   
over and over again.   
She proved herself to her father, her siblings, her enemies.   
She proved she was as harsh and unrelenting   
as the sun in the dog days of summer,   
when you couldn’t move for fear of overheating.   
Taut muscle shining with hard-earned sweat shimmers   
like the quivering, reflecting air above the surface of the horizon.   
She pushes herself through sunburn and perspiration   
right to the precipice of heat stroke.  
She pushes, hard, against any wall she hits   
like the heat waves that push across the country,   
like the wildfires that blaze across the too-dry land. 

 

Katie Gardner/Fall  
She stepped out of her house and started walking   
the long trail that winds through the woods.   
Leaves fall, a statement to her long hair, blonde hair,   
when they tangle up as though she herself is a plant.   
To others, she should be a spring person,   
as though Demeter only embodies new life.   
But fall—autumn—is the real start of a new cycle.   
Fall is when you see the fruit of the labor,   
when you try to guess which plant   
is going to survive the winter.   
Her breath falls out in crisp, winding puffs,  
she eyes the bark, the tough skin,   
and wishes it was hers to wrap herself up in.  
The sweaters, the jeans, the creases   
that fall against her skin can’t compare.  
She hums to herself in an endless tune  
she makes up as she goes along and counts   
how many different colors pattern the foliage.  
Scarlet, sienna, soft dirt browns,   
and the rare pinhead of olive, lime, evergreen. 

 

Travis Stoll/Winter  
Soft curls brush the angular sides of his face   
as the icy wind blows past him,   
rushing along at a pace that reminds him of Connor.   
Connor, who loves the warmth of Junes, July’s, Augusts,   
laughs at Travis every time he slips   
on the crystalline ice that coats sidewalks and streets.   
He loves the winters anyway, revels in the snap that hits   
his ears and nose and fingertips every time he steps out the door.   
Eventually they numb to where he can tap them and feel nothing   
but the odd sensation of not feeling the sensation.   
The snow crunches under his boots   
but he can’t hear the noise because snow muffles,  
like a silencer on a gun, which he has never seen   
despite practically being raised around weapons.   
Besides, weapons were never his ‘thing’,   
not like the other heroes who fought for their glory.   
Travis wasn’t a warrior,   
not in the way people thought of when they thought ‘warrior’.   
He was a thief, a modern ninja, who snuck around.   
Some found it easy to confuse with cowardice,   
but it was less easy when you’re bleeding out after a war   
and two identical faces pop up above you, smeared with their own blood,  
having risked grabbing pain killers that numb like sub-zero temperatures. 

 

Grover Underwood/Spring  
Panpipes whistle across the barely-budding leaves   
as they unfurl, like a stop-motion video,   
where things are sped up by a few hundred times.   
Things come to life, everywhere, surrounding him,   
sprouting up from the dead earth in victory.   
It’s a form of therapy—sitting for hours,   
watching the ground and playing softly,   
watching seeds burst up from the grit and dirt—  
after so long, so many ages of watching failures and losses.   
Spring is proof that things survive,   
even if it looks like they’re over and gone.   
He muses and the song goes mournful as he thinks of   
Pan, whom he let go,  
Luke, whom he steered right and then wrong,  
Thalia, Percy, Juniper, whom he almost (came so close) to losing.   
He watches, surveys, as the leaves rustle  
and bees and butterflies hover past in a lifelong search   
for the spreading, vivid petals that house treasure,   
guarded by thorns,   
and isn’t that an equally vivid analogy  
hovering in the head of a secretly-poetic satyr?


End file.
